JCS Holdings will reapply for a medical marijuana license outside of Barnstable County

SOUTH DENNIS – A group of Barnstable County businessmen looking to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Dennis didn't make the list of 20 licensees announced by the state late last week, but that doesn't mean JCS Holdings Inc. is out of the running, or even out of town.

SOUTH DENNIS – A group of Barnstable County businessmen looking to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Dennis didn't make the list of 20 licensees announced by the state late last week, but that doesn't mean JCS Holdings Inc. is out of the running, or even out of town.

The nonprofit organization and seven others statewide have been invited to submit applications for dispensaries in Franklin, Berkshire, Nantucket or Dukes counties – places where no licenses were awarded last week.

Under the state's medical marijuana regulations, each county must have at least one dispensary for medical marijuana patients but no more than five.

“We are absolutely going to apply for a license,” said Christopher Taloumis, president of JCS Holdings. “We want to be able to move forward somehow or in some way.”

Although JCS wasn't selected to open a dispensary in Dennis, Taloumis said he'll grow and process the medical marijuana on the property his corporation owns on American Way in South Dennis and transport the product to the county where he gets a license.

“That seems to make the most sense,” Taloumis said.

The state's regulations allow licensees to cultivate and process the marijuana at one location and sell it at another.

For instance, Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts, whose top officer is former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, plans to grow and process marijuana in Plymouth and sell it at dispensaries in Mashpee, Plymouth and Taunton.

JCS Holdings secured a special permit from the Dennis Planning Board for a medical marijuana dispensary on American Way last fall in anticipation of winning a state license.

The Dennis location offered the corporation's executive team the best access and oversight, since Taloumis and fellow principals Salvatore Consiglio and Justin Wharton all live in Barnstable County.

But the state awarded one of last week's 20 provisional licenses to a competing applicant: the William Noyes Webster Foundation. That corporation plans to cultivate medical marijuana at a facility on Great Western Road and sell it at 17 American Way.

Town Planner Daniel Fortier said it would probably take little more than a tweak of his present permit for Taloumis to grow marijuana in Dennis.

“Cultivation was part of what he already had approved,” Fortier said. “It's not like product will be sold there, and the town would have two dispensaries in close proximity.”

Officials at the state Department of Public Health hope to use this secondary application process “to identify top-level dispensaries for Berkshire, Dukes, Nantucket and Franklin counties this spring and summer,” said DPH spokeswoman Anne Roach.

“We will need to gauge applicant interest and geographic distribution before deciding how many additional provisional licenses will be granted, and where,” Roach said. “Applicants will need to demonstrate local support or non-opposition.”

Taloumis said he plans to make inroads into each of the available counties.

“Whether the county is big or small won't be the issue,” he said. “It will be about whether the needs of the patients there can be properly met and if the county can support the medical marijuana dispensary so the bills can be paid to keep the nonprofit going.”

State health officials hope to have 24 to 26 dispensaries operating by late summer, with at least one in every county.

Roach said the agency was fortunate to have nearly 30 high-scoring applications for medical marijuana dispensaries among the 100 submitted last November.

Applicants were rated on business plans, finances, community support and strength of their executive teams.

All successful applicants scored 137 or higher on a scale of 163.

“Rather than settle for a lesser qualified business plan, the decision was made to give some of the other top scoring applicants an opportunity to compete for slots in counties without a registered marijuana dispensary,” Roach said.